


out of my depth

by milfsteve (angelbolt)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV)
Genre: Bonding, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Sam's Titties, Sleepovers, bucky sleeping on the floor, not really spoilers just something quick from the teasers, technically! bc this is mostly bestie vibes but there's some gay looking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 03:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30133599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelbolt/pseuds/milfsteve
Summary: He usually puts a sleep timer on the TV for background noise to help him sleep, but with Sam there, he doesn’t really want to disturb. After triple checking everything’s locked, he rearranges his blankets and gets into a comfortable position on his side. With his right hand shoved under his pillow, curled around his tags, he unbuckles all the tiredness of the day and makes himself go to sleep.Of course, that doesn’t last long. It lasts longer on the floor, where the hard surface makes every ache of his body real and present for him to latch onto as he drifts away, but it does nothing to ward off the nightmares. The memories.•bucky sleeps on the floor and, hey, sam does too.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 238





	out of my depth

**Author's Note:**

> proud of myself for banging this out on the sheer thought of Them. minor detail that this is like. the very true canon where steve doesn't do his geriatric thing and he comes back normal but he still retires and is chilling in idk wakanda so bucky does mention facetiming him at one point and it is indeed our steve, not the old guy. happy sambucky day! let's ride!
> 
> title modified from heart by sleeping at last just 'cause. it's a lot more profoundly loving than i depict in the fic but that's how i feel for bucky feeling for sam.

Sam interrupts himself in the middle of his smirking recount of Bucky nearly getting his head taken off in the last round of shield throws to say, “It’s your mattress, isn’t it?”, as they walk into his apartment. All teasing pretense is dropped as his gaze fixate on the pile of blankets and pillows in the middle of the living room before sliding over to Bucky, mouth set in a strange, half-smiling line. 

Bucky hadn’t even had time to process Sam sweaty, framed in his dim apartment doorway. Doesn’t even have his damn keys in the little seashell-shaped bowl he’d bought himself on a whim to avoid a panic attack in TJ Maxx yet. He does that then, turning away with an internal sigh. “Something funny about it?”

It’d been at the back of his mind the entire time since Sam’d kept groaning about being too beat to drive the rest of the way across the city to his own apartment after training and Bucky’d said, _If it’ll get your lazy ass to shut up, just stay at my place,_ before he could realize. Sam had batted his eyelashes and cooed about Bucky’s _golden heart_ or whatever but still asked for Bucky’s explicit permission when they arrived. And so here they are.

“No,” Sam responds without missing a beat, but his mouth keeps twitching. Bucky takes his duffel without asking for it, just to give himself something to do, and goes to flip on the kitchen lights. “Just—thanks— I get it. Took me a while before I could even sleep with blankets on, let alone a mattress.”

And that’s the thing about Sam. When he said he _got_ something, Bucky never felt he was saying it just to say it. Considering the past few months have been his first true time as an actual person since the Great Depression, moonlighting as soldier, then Soldier, then war criminal, then weapon-in-recovery before even getting to the point that, hey, maybe he should start buying his own socks, the fact Sam can relate to something like _this_ makes the first part seem a little more human.

The brief silence between Bucky opening his barely used room and Sam fully stepping in and closing the door behind him might be the longest they’ve gone without verbally sparring in a while, swiftly snapped by Sam giving a low whistle and a, “Gotta say, I love the exposed brick. Lends to the whole minimalist thing.” When Bucky turns, Sam’s knocking on his kitchen backwash.

“What minimalist thing?” Bucky asks.

“Your whole,” Sam waves his hand around, landing it on the fridge handle and, at Bucky’s slight nod, pulling it open. He bends at the waist to peer inside. “Except for this. You trying to run Trader Bucky’s?” He snorts.

Bucky doesn’t comment on the fact that most of it is from Trader Joe’s because he’s formed half a codependent bond with the frozen chocolate-covered banana snacks, ‘cause if there’s one thing the future’s fucked up bananas got right, it’s that. Instead he says, “I don’t have a whole,” he waves his hand around in a more exaggerated, flapping way, not that Sam can see it forehead-deep in Bucky’s carrot stash.

He finally digs himself back out, wielding the Brita filter, “Did you get to choose your own furniture?”

“Yeah.” That was one thing he’d wanted. If he was gonna finally live alone, he got to do it on his own terms.

“So the emptiness isn’t on purpose?”

Bucky squints at him. “My apartment’s not _empty_.”

“Uh,” he sets the Brita down and starts scouring the cabinets, Bucky commenting, “No, sure, go ahead,” before Sam finishes with, “there’s nothing here, man.”

Bucky scowls. He looks around, throwing an arm out, “Yeah there is.”

“There’s a couch,” Sam says and locates the cups with a triumphant noise.

“There’s a couch,” Bucky repeats with a different emphasis. Exactly. There’s a couch. He has a couch, an entrance table, a console for the TV, a _TV._ And he chose all of it. The bed, too, even if he’d only ended up sleeping on it only two and a half nights all combined. IKEA was huge but the uniformity of the building made it easy to pick everything out and subsequently build it himself with Steve’s heckling through Face Time. There’d only been one minor bump when he nearly threw his phone out of the window to compensate for the fact Steve had been reading from the wrong HAVSTA instructions for a good ten agonizing minutes. He’d had all this shit, switching the TV out for a radio, in his old place, but he and Steve had mostly put everything together between other people’s garbage and his ma’s hand-me-downs.

Sam cocks his head to the side. Bucky drops his arm and crosses both instead, raising an eyebrow. After a long enough time where Bucky feels like if he blinks he’ll lose, which, like _hell_ , Sam picks the Brita back up and pours himself a glass. “Right!” He says and immediately picks up where he left off on the shield thing.

They’re able to keep a steady stream of bickering, even between their respective showers and the quick real argument over Sam sleeping in the bed while Bucky goes back to the living room.

“I can’t take your bed, dude—“

“You know I won’t be able to sleep in it anyway—“

“It’s the _principle_ —“

“Where was principle when you stuck your tongue in my ear to get out of a chokehold earlier—“

“Sitting right next to my straight edge moral compass and good, patriot heart. Bucky—“

“Sam.”

There’d been an actual staring contest, then. Bucky standing firm in the doorway of his own room with Sam across, barely dressed from getting out of the shower. Bucky doesn’t know how to say, _I’d rather you sleep here instead of out there where I’m the last to know if someone breaks in,_ or some variation of, _I_ want _you to sleep in my bed,_ without sounding like a complete moron and instead focuses on not letting the bead of water steadily running its course down Sam’s collarbones and chest be the reason he loses. His mouth’s drying out but if there’s anything he _can_ do, nowadays, it’s control himself. He’s only (recently) fuckin’ _human_.

It pays off ‘cause he wins when he has to licks his lips and Sam gives a weird, stilted jolt, finally blinking, all punctuated by a hissed, _“Damn_.”

Bucky only gives a, “There’s extra blankets under the bed. Good night,” before turning and closing the door behind him.

He usually puts a sleep timer on the TV for background noise to help him sleep, but with Sam there, he doesn’t really want to disturb. After triple checking everything’s locked, he rearranges his blankets and gets into a comfortable position on his side. With his right hand shoved under his pillow, curled around his tags, he unbuckles all the tiredness of the day and makes himself go to sleep.

Of course, that doesn’t last long. It lasts long _er_ on the floor, where the hard surface makes every ache of his body real and present for him to latch onto as he drifts away, but it does nothing to ward off the nightmares. The memories.

Because that’s the worst part, honestly. It’s never a true nightmare, it’s not like he dreams of HYDRA as the mythological creature eating him up, or of all his teeth falling out or some shit. He dreams and it’s the memories he _didn’t_ want back.

Tonight, the hot blood of the hysterical man he just shot in the face wakes him up.

He sits up violently, chest heaving, kicking the blankets out of the way. He’d forgotten to take his shirt off before sleeping and it’s stuck to his back with sweat. The room’s dark but it’s weaponized against him because his eyes don’t find anything solid and all the figures swirl and static into one continuous wave that overtakes him and doesn’t let him _breathe_.

Bucky’s not sure how long he sits there trying to break the surface before there are eyes, wide and brown and genuinely worried. He doesn’t know if he says _Sam_ but he thinks it clearly enough for the word to sing in his head.

“Breathe with me,” Bucky hears and tries. Sam doesn’t touch him, which he appreciates. The more he’s finally able to adjust, the more he’s able to piece together how Sam’s crouching in front of him, shirtless, like the smart guy he is, with one hand braced on the floor.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Bucky curses once he gets that one gasp of air that doesn’t taste like salt water, drops his forehead to his bent knee.

“How’re you doing on the touch department?”

Bucky gets out, “If you try to hug me, I’ll supplex you into the second floor, I think,” less a threat, more a genuine statement. He doesn’t have the violence wired into his system anymore but when he’s raw like this, it’s less about a machine’s knee jerk response and more his body trying to protect itself from getting hurt again. It’d happened, once, with T’Challa, months and half a decade ago, and Bucky had been appropriately mortified despite the fact he’d insisted it was fine, it was normal.

Now with more familiarity, he knows he should have said that, respectfully, nothin’ about this ‘s fucking _normal_ , your Highness. Christ.

Sam shifts, the wood floor creaking. “How about, like, a respectful shoulder touch?”

Bucky’s still getting used to being on dry land, but he nods against his knee, says, “That’s fine.”

Sam’s hand isn’t overwarm, the contrast cool through Bucky’s sleeve. His fingers squeeze briefly before pulling away. Against all else, it does _help_. It’s a longer, more manageable time frame before Bucky speaks again, lifting his head briefly.

“Thanks.”

Sam’s sitting back on his heels, absently flicking his hand, “Don’t mention it.” He’s not looking at Bucky except for a brief second where he is before standing. “Wait,” he says and goes back to the room without closing the door.

Bucky doesn’t think he could bolt if he tried, so he just lays his flesh hand over the seam where metal meets his shoulder. It doesn’t ache, not like the old one, Shuri would never do such a shit job, but the phantom of it can’t be fixed, super genius or not.

“You want water?” Sam calls.

Bucky answers, “No, thanks.” He shudders at the thought but after a second the casualness of Sam’s voice sinks in and Bucky follows it up with a gruff, “You don’t have to be nice to me just ‘cause I freaked out, Sam. Go to sleep.”

“First of all, you didn’t freak out, you had a panic attack. There’s a difference,” Sam scoffs, voice getting closer. “Second, it’s called cour-te-sy. Politeness. I’m a guest.” The bedroom door closes, but his words floats in the living room space, “I can be nice.”

“Not to me, you can’t,” Bucky throws back, though it trails off at the end when his eyes adjust to see the mound of linens Sam has in his arms. He doesn’t mention it, because Sam doesn’t, even when he comes over and drops it all a foot or so away from Bucky.

“Oh yes I can,” he chimes as he starts arranging it all into the same makeshift shape as Bucky’s. “I didn’t even make fun of you for your bald spot after your Mulan moment, did I?”

Whatever confusion Bucky’d been feeling dissipates at the memory, scowling sharply. So his haircut was a little spur of the moment. It got the job done. “No, you just smacked the back of my head eight times.”

Sam holds a finger up, turning it into a point, “But I didn’t make fun of you. And I even got you that nice baseball cap to cover it up.” Bucky doesn’t get the chance to retaliate that it had been a _Red Sox_ baseball cap before he’s momentarily dazed by a bright smile, white even in the dark, “See? Nice.”

Bucky has to shut his eyes for a second to keep whatever that stirs up in his chest down. He slumps back down into the pillows, lacing his fingers together over his eyes with a low, “God, I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Sam says, still with that same teasing tone, sincerity decorating the edge.

Bucky keeps hearing the blankets rustling. He doesn’t take his hands away, heart finally slowing it’s tempo into something resembling normalcy.

“You gonna tell me what you’re doing anytime soon?”

The rustling pauses. Bucky tries not to look through his fingers to see if Sam’s looking back at him.

“If we’re gonna have a sleepover, might as well do it properly, right?” He finally says, closest to tentative than Bucky’s ever heard him. That’s what makes him peel his metal hand away, blinking up at the sincere tilt of Sam’s head. “You okay with that?”

Bucky doesn’t even know what his answer might be until his mouth says, “Yeah.”

And it’s true. Despite everything, he trusts Sam more than pretty much everyone. There might be more to that, one day, something he kinda doesn’t wanna touch to that degree right this second, but the easiness of it makes him comfortable in a way he hasn’t been a long time. It might not stop the nightmares, but something about the calm of it settles him considerably.

Sam grins again, smaller, more genuine this time, before it turns haughty with an exaggerated flopping down onto his pile. “Good. Then chill out."

"You chill out," Bucky says back on instinct, taking his original position. He's still clutching at his dog tags and he lets up on the grip just a little.

Sam stays on his back, blankets all rucked up around his bare chest that Bucky thankfully can't fully outline in the dark. He has one arm tucked under his pillow, the other thrown across his stomach. But his head's still tilted in Bucky's direction. They are very blatantly making eye contact and this time it doesn't even feel like a challenge. It's just a state of being, relaxing back into their respective Circadian rhythms. _Chilling out_. Right. Don't let Sam say Bucky never listens to him.

His eyelids are heavy enough to flutter when Sam murmurs, "Night, Bucky."

Bucky's able to slur, "Night, Sam," before he falls asleep.

(And, no, he doesn't sleep through the rest of the night. Another nightmare comes, this one fast and less about violence, more about the stiff, cold hours perched on an unknown ledge with a sniper on his shoulder before he squeezes the trigger like it's another extension to his arm. He doesn't wake up as violently, either, opening his eyes to try and offset the pounding of his heart. After enough time, Sam's there, mouth slack, asleep, and still angled towards Bucky. Bucky falls back asleep counting the number of times his fingers twitch against his ribs. He gets through the night.)

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos appreciated! besos.


End file.
